Federal Incentive Awards Program Remarks on Presenting the Award to Lawrence L. Guzick.

THE PRESIDENT. I believe in 1954, the Government established a procedure by which distinguished employees could be rewarded for suggestions or inventions that saved the American taxpayers tremendous amounts of money. This is only the sixth time that the maximum award will have been made. Mr. Guzick is an engineer. He has evolved a device which has been now adopted in the Navy and, I think, which has a great potential for adoption in all steam systems in the military and in private industry.

It's a small device. I was given one this morning to take a look at. And this little metering device for permitting steam trapped pressure to escape--is that correct?--has already saved more than 875,000 barrels of oil and more than a half million dollars in repair costs in the Navy alone.

This is a saving of about $10 1/2 million to the Federal Government. I understand that Mr. Guzick, after he designed this device and had it patented, had a hard time getting it adopted for use. This is typical, I think, of what does occur quite often unnecessarily in our government structure, but it's also a tribute to him that his persistence and his ingenuity has brought such rich dividends to the American people. I'm very proud to present this morning the maximum award to Mr. Guzick that can be presented under the Employee Incentive Program of the Federal Government.

I think we have all heard that the award is for $25,000. The check is for $18,130.31. Perhaps we ought to devise another incentive reward for somebody who can come up with an idea of not withholding taxes when such an award is presented. But this is your share of the award, and the Navy has now saved $10,500,000, plus about $7,000 that we have taken out of your award for taxes. [Laughter]

I do want to thank you. It's a great honor for me to participate in this cere. And I think it's a tribute to Mr. Guzick, but also in some ways, this is a tribute to all the superlative civil servants that work for our Government. They're not recognized often enough, and the quiet professionalism that's there is a great strength to a President. And the absence of adequate recognition is something that I hope can be alleviated.

I know that the Navy officials here and the Secretary of the Navy, Graham Claytor, and others, join me in congratulating Mr. Guzick in expressing our sincere thanks to him on behalf of the American people for the superlative contribution to our Nation's security and to the more efficient administration of the jobs of all of us from the President on down.

So, this saved us $10,500,000, Mr. Guzick, and we thank you very much for this contribution to the American people. Good luck to you.

SECRETARY CLAYTOR. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I'm not only very proud of this invention which has saved us so much money, but I'm also proud that the Navy was able to put it to use as fast as it did, in spite of the bureaucratic problems that we all face. I'm proud of that.

I also want to say that I hope we can have a few more inventions like this, because if we do we'll balance that budget a whole lot sooner than we otherwise would be able to. Thank you very much.

THE PRESIDENT. As a completely nonpartisan President, I'd like to point out that of the six maximum awards that have been presented in the last 23 years, the Navy has won four of them. [Laughter]